A Peculiar Grace (3 page)

Of course in the end he’d behaved badly. Not from intention and certainly not from malice but from stark utter disbelief as those comets either collided too hard and broke to fragments or simply slid by each other after a long grazing spark-laden interval.

Over time he realized almost everyone gets their heart broken and is expected to rise out of that, to learn and go along. But Hewitt’s heart was not broken but split by a chisel and some part, something greater he came to realize than half was irrevocably gone. Finally he knew it didn’t matter if this was a failure of a version of maturity on his part or not; it was how it was. It was what he got and every single day of his life he ached with the only real prayer he’d ever known—that Emily Soren was healthy and happy with where life had taken her. It was, this minor religious penance, the least he could do.

They were both seventeen, the summer before their final year of high school and she was right where she’d spent her entire life although Hewitt was three hundred miles west of home working with the smith Timothy Farrell and had finished his half-day Saturday and so was free until Monday dawn. He’d showered in the outside stall beside Timothy’s forge and tossed his hiking boots into the
backseat of the old Volvo, his hair released from its braid clean and flowing down his back and over his shoulders, dressed in cutoff jeans and a pearl-snap button western denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his bare feet glorious on the pedals as he drove down off the hill above the lake and toward Bluffport with no idea what he’d find but certain he’d find something and slowly cruised through town until he saw the drive-in burger joint and thought food was a good place to start and Emily Soren walked out with the order he’d repeated twice through the shaky tilted metal speaker. And even then watching her come and seeing everything like that first tingle of acid kicking in, would not have guessed it would be dawn Sunday before he’d sleep again. But at the time and forever after knew he was ready for whatever she brought.

“I know who you are,” she said, hooking the tray on the doorframe, leaning in close to do it and holding there, waiting.

“Not yet, you don’t,” he said. “But you should.” She had a pair of hammered silver bangles on her left wrist and a nice piece of almost green turquoise wrapped in a net of fine silver wire from a leather choker around her neck. Hewitt had a similar turquoise and silver stud in his left ear. She squinted a caution not reflected in her laughing eyes and said, “What makes you think so?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just sounds like a good idea.”

Fifteen hours later they were sitting back to back on the long dock of her family’s summer cottage not truly opened for the summer watching the sky lighten and stars wink out, a planet high and streaks of clouds turning from low dull blueblack to a slow simmering burn of sunrise approaching, the still lake with its small wavelets a somewhat denser mirror of color, Emily with her legs crossed before her and Hewitt with his knees up, their spines aligned side to side, sitting in the long silence of the end of a long night and the sublime beginning of the day and it had been her hand that crept easily back and found his. As he gently held her hand he knew he’d recall the feel of her hand, of her life flowing through it and against his, for all the days that
remained to him. And so the night went down and they sat within the nether light of predawn.

He’d picked her up when she got off work at the Keuka Farms drive-in and as agreed driven her home to meet her parents Ellen and Gregor and an assortment of younger and older siblings he couldn’t keep straight, being sent to the barn to chat with her father as he finished the evening milking. In the barn he made no attempt to help but instead followed her father from cow to cow as he milked and they talked about farming which Hewitt knew from helping his own father tend the homestead in Lympus and work he’d pitched in with among neighbors during the spring sugaring, the summer haying and fall getting up firewood and such, knew enough to know the farm he was upon was a vastly richer, more demanding and rewarding enterprise than those he knew and so was able to ask the right questions, offer comparisons based on experience and also checked but appropriate praise and honest appreciation. Gregor had a white paintbrush mustache and the same eyes as his daughter and wore a striped railroad engineer’s cap tilted back to allow him not only to bring his face close to the side of the cow but look up at Hewitt without craning his neck. Several male children worked along, the older ones milking ahead or behind their father, the younger ones feeding calves or forking out stalls and one young girl perhaps eight or ten kept appearing and disappearing, bringing Hewitt one after another young or older barn cats for his admiration. About this child Gregor said as if in passing, “She’s a pistol, that one,” and then spoke shortly and to the point of his esteem for Timothy Farrell—a commentary Hewitt understood he was not expected to respond to beyond mild affirmations and was Soren’s blessing and warning at once. Then all into the house for a mighty supper.

Driving out into the bright early evening Emily turned to Hewitt and said, “Dad’s not made his mind up about you. Far from it. But he and I came to terms a couple years ago and while he doesn’t always pretend he likes it he knows he’s got no choice but to trust me.” She
had changed out of the bad shamrock green Keuka Farms T-shirt and still in her jeans was wearing a Danskin sleeveless top and carried along a flannel shirt. Then she dug down into her jeans and pulled up a bottle cap sealed tight with twisted plastic wrap. She said, “I’ve got this red Lebanese hash oil but nothing to smoke it with.”

Hewitt was again barefoot. “There’s a little bag of Colombian gold in the glove compartment, along with papers and a pipe. You can dab some of the oil on the screen and then pack it or if you know how the best thing is to spread a smear of the oil on top of the weed just before you twist up the joint.”

“I can roll just fine. You got a matchstick to spread the oil?”

He reached up on the dash and from the accumulation there plucked out a matchbook and handed it over. He was quiet while she quickly rolled up what he already knew was a killer joint and then while she was blowing on it, turning it in her fingertips to dry it he said, “So is there a plan?”

“You need a plan, Hewitt?”

“Nope. You going to light that or you want me to?”

“It’s not quite ready. Almost. The oil needs to soak in.”

“I know that.”

“Then why’d you ask? Oh fuck it, I’m ready to get high. There’s always more where that came from. And there’s a party. Are you up for a party, Hewitt?”

“Fire that up. I’m always ready for a party.”

“You sure you don’t want to get high first and drive around and then decide?”

“That party hasn’t even started yet, has it?”

“Of course it has. And someone’s always got to be the first to show up.”

“Hey Emily?”

“Yup?”

“You going to talk or you going to light that joint?”

She was quiet until he looked over at her. He was already lost, up on the high country between the lakes where it was farm after farm spreading out all around and all he knew was where west was. When he looked at her she was waiting. “Hewitt?” she said. Then stuck the joint in her mouth and fired a match and hit it hard and held it as the dense sweet smell of the oil filled the car. Then she passed it over to him and slowly exhaled. “Hewitt,” she said again as he toked. “Let’s get ripped.”

He didn’t say anything but smoked and passed it back to her and they went along like that until he reached up to the rearview mirror and pulled down the alligator clip and smoked right down to the nub, until the last hard toke sucked fire into his mouth and he choked and coughed and then he said, “Hey Emily?”

She twisted sideways in the seat to look at him. The evening sun in full accordance with her luminescence. She said, “You all right?”

“I caught a buzz.”

“Good,” she said. “Me too.”

“Only thing. Is I don’t have any idea where I am.”

She was fiddling with the buttons on the radio, then gave that up for the dial. She said, “You lost, Hewitt?”

“I guess you could say that.”

She waited and then said, “Me too. But keep driving and we’ll always find our way back home.”

“You think?”

“Don’t you?”

Now he waited. Then said, “I believe so. I do believe so.”

She pushed her sneakers off and slid way down in the seat and propped her bare feet up out the window and said, “That’s good. Why don’t you just drive a while.”

They sat high on the end of the bluff that broke the northern half of the lake into two branches and gave the village its name and watched the sunset and drank a four-pack of St. Pauli Girl and then at dusk
retreated halfway back the length of the bluff past vineyards and wood-lots and scrub pastures before dropping down a side road to the east lake shore and then almost immediately up again, this time a narrow gravel rutted track that passed through two stone entrance columns heavy with moss and tangled poison ivy and up some more, then opening before a long three-story Italianate house with peeling white paint and some obvious dark places where windows had been either boarded over or covered inside with cardboard. At least a dozen cars were parked there as well as an old school bus painted blue and off to one side on what had once been lawn was the incandescent large cone of a teepee. Hewitt’s first thought was I’m home and he would remember this a year and a half later after he’d grown to know some of the people he met that night and the house itself well, far too well. But at the moment it was as if Emily were leading him toward what he’d somehow expected, as if she were part of all of it. Several people clumped on the long porch fronting the house and from within a wave of bass and drums and guitar far too dense and loud to come from any stereo system and he paused, rocking back on his heels, still barefoot and she paused with him, cupped her hand inside his elbow and leaned her upper body against his side. He gestured toward the teepee and she tilted her face up and spoke in his ear, “That’s Max’s. He’s full-blood Iroquois—a Seneca. Very heavy vibe but a sweetheart, claims to be a direct descendant of Cornplanter. You can’t miss him, bald as an old man. I think he shaves his head. And check it out.”

“What?”

“He’s the drummer, flat-out rock and roll. Come on, let’s go in.”

Emily knew everyone which didn’t surprise Hewitt and at least half of them seemed to know who he was—guys running long eyes over him and some of the women as well but the air was thick with weed and the band was cranking and for a time he stood watching and listening as Emily made slow rounds, Hewitt thinking Well she brought me here she’s not going to abandon me and then something else clicked in and he thought She’s showing me off, and immediately
pulled back, not willing to make such assumption. Even if he knew he was the exotic stranger he also knew that wouldn’t last and then someone handed him a paper cup half filled with cranberry juice and told him Down the rabbit hole and he stood holding the cup until Emily glanced at him and he raised the cup and tipped his head in question and she nodded yes and he drank it down.

Sometime later Emily was back, glowing iridescence herself and they went outside and sat in his old Volvo while he quickly twisted up some hash joints and while she held the pipe for herself and Hewitt as he worked, both open naked souls looking upon each other and laughing, laughing and as they got out of the car to return inside he bent quickly to kiss her and she not only kissed him back soft and sweet as a peach but moaned as he pulled his lips away—Hewitt all liquid neon sparking and feeling those ten thousand trailing enraptured threads between them, and then inside again where they made their way to the front of the living room where the band was set up and people were dancing and the music was hot and clean and punchy with dirty drawdowns spiraling with singing lead guitar bringing it back up—Stones and Feat and Dead and Clapton and just about anything else he could hope for and the night opened like a pod splitting as he and Emily began to dance.

Hewitt liked to dance, liked the music filling his body and carrying it in such a way that he was a part of the music as the music was of him—but dancing with Emily was a revelation. They began slow as those around them, thumping and pumping legs and elbows and torsos and shaking heads with the beat and rumble, arms shimmying and fingers trailing with the vocals and lead lines and then although he could never recall how it changed the space around them opened up and they were flying within each other, passing and touching, hands meeting and sliding as they passed and turned and worked lowdown toward each other before one or the other would flare out spiraling away and they were off again, sometimes working backward without once looking and coming butt to butt with hair flying as heads bent
low and once Hewitt heard her growl as they did this and the band seemed to have hit its own head as there were no more breaks between songs but long slippery sequences that would suddenly bounce home into what Hewitt already had heard coming and it seemed Emily did too as she was right there with him on every turn and now both of them with soaked hair and shirts and on they went going down the road and Hewitt had one inspired moment of clarity when he realized that they were making love for the first time and they were not fading away, not at all or ever because love for real won’t fade away and then back outside in the cool night leaning against each other and silent, down off the porch on the ruined lawn by a copse of twisted cedars, Emily plucking out the front of her Danskin and blowing down toward her breasts and then looking at Hewitt, that face he felt he already knew sober and somber and laughing all at once and said, “Can you dance like that when you’re not tripping?”

He reached a finger and slid it through the cooling sheen of sweat on her nose and said, “Can you?”

She smiled and said, “How about some peace and quiet?”

Two hours later they were seated back to back on the cottage dock watching the day peel back the night. They’d come through the village where Hewitt counted three dogs and a parked sheriff’s cruiser and stopped at the all-night gas station where they bought eggs and bread and orange juice and drove around the eastern side of the lake to her family’s cottage where she stretched up tiptoe to take a key down from the hook hidden by the upper door jamb and sat in the chill dormant house with the low background scent of mothballs while she fried eggs and made toast as they listened to crinkly crackly big band swing on the AM radio and then went out to the dock.